With ref to server and browser loading speed is it better to use relative or direct linking? i.e. is it better to use /image/Test.jpg or http://www.mydomain.com/image/Test.jpg ? I am thinking that relative is faster as the server doesnt have to make a dns lookup to get the server ip address for the second link. Any ideas?
I've never noticed a tangible difference between the two, but using relative links would make the overall filesize of the page a matter of bytes smaller so that might give you a little speed boost.
You might be wrong about it. Anyway, I prefer to use relative links every time they refer to inner pages within the same website, even though that can be a tricky task sometimes.
I don't think that it should have to do a second dns lookup, as that should be cached anyway. That aside, I normally use relative links for most things anyway.